“Si je le veux, il mourra!―Maléfices et Sorcellerie dansla Campagne Genevoise (1497–1530) (review)

Yvonne Petry

Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, Volume 6, Number 2, Winter 2011, pp.242-244 (Article)

Published by University of Pennsylvania PressDOI: 10.1353/mrw.2011.0016

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242 Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft �Winter 2011

and to modernism. While all the essays in this volume relate in some waytheoretically to an understanding of ‘‘ritual,’’ none engages it in the contem-porary collectives where it is an emic term, which would have offered someuseful counterpoints to the arguments of pure theory.

These omissions do not render this book of any less interest to thoseinvolved in the methodological discourse on magic, but do suggest that itmight be beneficial if the historical study of magic and ritual studies were tiedtogether more closely than seems to be the case here. Nevertheless, no readerof Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft is likely to regret the purchase of this engagingand valuable book.

claire fanger

Rice University

sophie simon. ‘‘Si je le veux, il mourra!’’Malefices et Sorcellerie dans la CampagneGenevoise (1497–1530). Cahiers Lausannois d’Histoire Medievale 42. Lau-sanne: Universite de Lausanne, 2007. Pp. 305.

Occasionally, the history of the witch hunts features the emergence of newparadigms or radical approaches, but more commonly it proceeds throughthe patient analysis of source material from archives spread throughoutEurope. Several recent volumes in the series Cahiers Lausannois d’Histoire Med-ievale have been dedicated to the witch hunts in Switzerland, and the mostrecent volume continues this effort. In the current volume, Sophie Simonexamines four documents from the Geneva state archives that deal withwitchcraft trials from a rural episcopal territory just west of Geneva, centeredon the castle of Peney. The first three documents are of inquisitorial trialsthat took place between 1497 and 1499. The fourth is of an inquest intowitchcraft that was conducted in the same community in 1530, this timeunder episcopal direction. All four documents are transcribed in full in theoriginal Latin and translated into French by Simon, comprising approxi-mately one hundred pages of source material.

The first three trials are dealt with as a group, which Simon then contrastswith the later inquest. The fifteenth-century trials, conducted by Dominicaninquisitors from Geneva, are typical for this period. In the first, a widownamed Rolette de Tupho was suspected of heresy, and under torture con-fessed to making a pact with the devil, murdering children, and making apowder to kill both people and animals. The second trial is of Etienne deTupho, whose wife had supposedly been one of Rolette’s victims. Etienne

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became implicated when a witness named him as having danced with Roletteat a devil’s sabbath. Simon points out that this case is unusual in that Etiennerequested a defense lawyer. Unfortunately, the document is incomplete andwe do not know whether he actually received legal representation. All thatis known is that his case ended with a verdict of banishment from the com-munity. In the third case, which took place the same day as Etienne’s, Pero-nette Verneyac was accused of witchcraft. Her case was problematic in thateven under torture, she refused to confess. Her case also ended with herbanishment; Simon speculates that this may have been a way to avoid embar-rassment over her refusal to confess (p. 82). Simon describes these three casesas typical of the increasing preoccupation on the part of fifteenth-centuryinquisitors with fears of a large-scale demonic conspiracy.

Simon then turns to the 1530 document, which consists of a series ofdepositions given by seventy witnesses, who accused twenty-two of theirneighbors of maleficia or evil-doing. Most cases involved harming individuals,farm animals, crops, or personal property through magical means. Unfortu-nately, these documents are also incomplete; there are no records to indicatesubsequent arrests, trials, or convictions. Nevertheless, the depositions areimportant in themselves and Simon’s analysis of them is the most interestingsection of the book. Simon uses them as the basis for a prosopographicalstudy of the community. She categorizes both the accused and the accusersin terms of gender, age, and social status (pp. 97–102). She uncovers the pettysquabbles, rivalries, and jealousies that arose from the daily stresses of rurallife (p. 146). The depositions become a point of entry into issues aroundlandholding, collective farming practices, transportation of animals, and otherelements typical of the mixed farming and herding that was undertaken inthis region.

Taken together, the four sources are used by Simon to develop a broaderthesis about the nature of witchcraft beliefs in Switzerland. It is here that theanalysis seems rather thin. Simon suggests that a shift occurred from theperiod of the late fifteenth-century trials to the inquests of 1530. She arguesthat by 1530, fear of magic had become pervasive, but it was fear of maleficiarather than of the demonic witchcraft constructed by the inquisitors (p. 128).This conclusion is not surprising; it is well known that the view of witchcraftas a demonic conspiracy was a creation of the theologians and was taught tothe people of rural Europe over time. But her analysis also seems to ignorethe very different nature of the two sets of documents under scrutiny. Thefifteenth-century trial records indicate that torture was applied to elicit con-fessions in two of the three cases examined, while the depositions of 1530are a glimpse into an earlier stage of the judicial process. The demonological

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components of a confession normally only emerged upon questioning undertorture. Therefore, the variation in these two sets of documents can beexplained by the fact that they depict two different stages in the trial processitself. Using them as an indicator of change over time seems to ignore thispoint.

The purpose of this publication is to introduce the scholarly communityto a set of archival sources. That said, it would have been useful to include afuller discussion of their context, particularly of the 1530 inquest. Geneva,and the surrounding countryside, was going through a period of intensepolitical, social, and religious strife in the years leading up to 1530. Theexpansionist efforts of Charles III, Duke of Savoy, had been ongoing for adecade by this point and were rapidly intensifying. Moreover, plague arrivedin Geneva in 1529. Simon briefly discusses the connection between illness,accusations of poisoning, and the fear of witches (pp. 120–21) but the topicis much more fully explored by William Naphy in his book Plagues: Poisonsand Potions: Plague-Spreading Conspiracies in the Western Alps, c.1530–1640(Manchester, 2002), to which Simon does not refer. Most importantly, Simondoes not discuss the arrival of Protestantism. Farel was working in the regionby 1529 and Geneva was quickly becoming the center of reforming senti-ment. This is pertinent with respect to the concept of heresy. For example,Simon notes (p. 111) that in the 1530 inquest there are references to unhap-piness over immoral clergymen, and that criticism of them might be con-strued as signs of heresy, but does not situate this in the context of the SwissReformation.

The chief merit of this work is the access it provides to rare archival docu-ments pertinent to the study of the witch trials in western Switzerland.Simon’s analysis of the village tensions that found expression in accusationsof witchcraft in 1530 is particularly insightful. However, on the whole, thiswork tends to confirm rather than to challenge the conventional understand-ing of the witch trials and witchcraft beliefs in the Swiss countryside.

yvonne petry

Luther College, University of Regina

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